From League Founder and Former Commissioner Dennis Blair:

On November 7, 1978, I joined the Wyckoff Fire Department. I played varsity baseball in high school and had a love of the game. I asked some members if we had a softball team or a league that we could join. The answer was that we got the guys together sometimes and played pickup games but had no structured league.

My next thing was to call other fire departments looking for games on a regular basis. The best day, we decided, was to play Sunday mornings. I called a couple surrounding towns to see about any interest. Midland Park was one, and Ridgewood Ambulance was another. We would schedule games with no preset field and just meet.

Sometimes, the teams would show up, and there were no-shows as well. We decided to put money upfront hoping that would alleviate the problem. It started with $75 with a few more towns: Allendale, Mahwah and on-and-off Waldwick, Franklin Lakes and others.

The umpiring was performed by each team in the early years but not what we wanted. We couldn't get real umpires because we had no set fields each week, making it hard to have a schedule. After a couple years, I was able to secure enough friends and relatives to pay them as non-sanctioned umpires.

With all this transpiring, I was able to keep the stats on my Commodore 64 computer and make out schedules as statistician and coordinating efforts as League Director. I asked Ed Garza from Mahwah to be treasurer, and he is still in that position to this day.

We decided to finally only allow teams in who can secure a field each week in order to have sanctioned umpires. This was accomplished, and we then had an agreement with the Bergen County Softball Umpires Association (BCASU) to umpire our games.

Word spread about the league as a competitive but fun as well. We had teams drop out of the South Bergen Softball League to join us. These teams included Maywood, Saddle Brook and expanded to many others, such as Oakland, Paramus, Glen Rock, Fair Lawn, etc.

In the following years, we welcomed a statistician, Bob Hyman from Mahwah, with myself staying as League Director running all league meetings. As more time passed, Bob became League Director as well as Statistician, and I settled in as Commissioner, responsible for Umpire situations, running all league meetings and presiding over the Executive Board.  

The Executive Board we developed is comprised of the Statistician/Director, Commissioner, Treasurer and the Player Representative, who at the time was Doug Habermann.

This league has evolved into one on the best leagues anywhere. Having the capacity for only so many teams, there were years we turned teams away. The league has in-depth structured rules, league fees, umpires, etc.

After almost 36 years running the league, and having hung up my cleats years before, I retired as Commissioner in March 2015 and turned it over to Doug Habermann. Bob Hyman retired from his post of many years as well.

-- Dennis Blair, Wyckoff Fire Department Community Engine Co. 2